Artist | London

About

Mindy Lee is a UK-based artist.

Mindy Lee & J.A.L-B statement:

Mindy Lee & J.A.L-B have been working collaboratively for the past 2 years. * The paintings evolve from an autobiographical narrative exploring identity and memory through psychological and physical states.

The most recent series appears painted on the front and back of discarded clothes worn by the artists. They are rendered functionless and unfamiliar through the unpicking, re-assembling and introduction of other domestic fabric. This creates a layered hybrid space between canvas and garment.

The paintings move between abstraction and figuration, creating pockets of narrative around the garment.

These works create a place between autobiography and mythology. This place explores what is felt, known, learnt and lost in a dishevelled attempt to capture and reveal the bodies’ inner and outer states.

These work slip between decay and revival, where disgust and seduction intertwine through a revelling in squeamishness. Freshly served or exquisite leftovers, elements of the bodily, the abject and the grotesque beautifully fester.

“While alluding to classic landscapes or portraits, the works appear to have been invaded by body parts – in one a large eye is central, another features a kind of intestinal tract. The physicality of the works is compelling, despite invoking a shiver of disgust.” Eliza Williams [1]

“Although Lee’s painting offers many pleasures in its manufacture and materiality, there is no denying the scatological impulse at work. The grandeur of the canvases’ ethereal or cavernous spaces give way to the more immediate sense of the frenzied yet obsessively particular application, of paint as shit, snot, blood – ectoplasm, even. The living organism has gone rancid or become dismembered; sutured, suppurating, there is something sickly about its growth. From a healthy distance we can take pleasure in its state of decay; if it is contained we can enjoy its material waywardness. Yet the larger these works become the greater the sense that the medium will escape its confines and might contaminate us, creating an exciting atmosphere of danger.” Rebecca Fortnum [2]

“In each painting, there’s a rectangular core from which a swarm of energy and colour explodes across the canvas, riding the edge between seduction and disgust. Just as we watch horror movies to relish our sofa safety from the slash and gore, Lee’s exquisite layers, rings and ridges of what look like snot, smoke and gunk, emit such an infectious force that we can only admire the adrenalin that spills out over the borders of the frames themselves. The spoors of colour maintain an ugly coherence, as if the party balloons have long burst but the fun goes on.” Cherry Smyth [3]

[2] Rebecca Fortnum is a Reader in Fine Art at University of the Arts London and author of Contemporary British Women Artists, in their own words.
Quoted from ‘The Pleasure’s All Mine’ Press Release, Transition Gallery 2009